Читать книгу The Heart of Brody McQuade - Mallory Kane - Страница 10

Chapter Four

The sound of a card triggering the door lock didn’t surprise Brody. He’d been expecting Hayes Keller, the third Ranger working with him on the Cantara Gardens murders. He finished writing the last name on the whiteboard as the door opened.

“So where have you been?” he asked, glancing at his watch. It was after ten.

“Drinking beer and watching strippers.”

Brody shot Hayes one of his patented silencer looks.

“Hey—” Hayes tossed his Stetson onto a chair and held up his hands, palms out “—I was finishing up a case. Twenty-four/seven, we never sleep. That’s our motto, right?”

Brody allowed himself a tiny smile. It was an old joke. “Nope. The Ranger motto is One riot, one Ranger.”

“That, too.” Hayes stepped over to the whiteboard. “What’s all this?”

“The printout on the table lists every tenant of Cantara Gardens who used their access cards on the night of Victoria’s attack.” Brody pointed toward two thin manila folders. “Those are Briggs’s and Zelke’s case files with printouts of card use on the night each died. I’m comparing the lists.”

Hayes looked at the board. “Lotta names.” He pointed. “Do all these show up on all three nights? Damn busy place, those condos.”

“Tell me about it. I spent all day today talking to the tenants. There are forty units. All are occupied. Fifty-two tenants total. The manager’s records list seventy-eight active cards.”

“Whoa! So I take it the manager isn’t too careful about controlling card access. You got the breakdown of who’s where?”

“Twenty-nine are singles. Eleven couples, and one couple has her mother living with them. Twenty-nine plus twenty-three accounts for the fifty-two official tenants. Who knows how many of the singles have live-in friends.”

Hayes looked at the board. “He’s got seventy-eight active cards for fifty-two tenants? That’s twenty-six cards unaccounted for. You think there are that many freeloaders?”

Brody shook his head. “I’m hoping most of the cards are lost or destroyed, but there’s no record. The manager apparently gave ’em out like Halloween candy. I don’t think the man ever saw a request for a card he didn’t grant.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m calling a special meeting of the Cantara Hills Homeowners’ Association to talk about changing out the condos’ security system. If I had my way, I’d change out the manager, too. I’ve got an SAPD officer meeting with each tenant to round up duplicate cards. That’ll narrow the field a little bit.” Brody arched his neck and massaged the tight tendons of his shoulders.

Hayes yawned and headed for the kitchen. “Want a beer?”

“Nah. Just water.” Brody stared at the grid he’d drawn on the whiteboard. He had three columns, headed Briggs, Zelke and Victoria. Under each he’d listed every card access recorded by the security-system computer from noon until 2:00 a.m. starting on the date of each attack.

He rubbed a hand over his face and sat down. All the numbers were beginning to run together.

Hayes tossed him a bottle of water and sat on the other side of the table. Brody turned up the bottle and drank half of it in one gulp.

“That’s a lot of people coming and going,” Hayes said, echoing the remark he’d made earlier.

“Look at the repeats.” Some names had shown up on the entry log several times during one evening.

“Does the system show exits?”

“I wish. Just entries through the gate.”

“So Jane Majorsky, for instance, who came in three times on the day Briggs was killed and once on Zelke’s day, and twice the day Victoria was attacked, might have loaned her card to someone else.”

Brody nodded again and then finished his water. “She could have loaned her card or she could have given somebody her original card and gotten a duplicate from the manager. There’s nothing that indicates when the card was made.”

“Pretty sloppy.”

“And dangerous.”

“So how many of those cards did you personally see?”

Brody dug his small notebook out of his pants pocket and flipped pages. He quickly counted the list of names he’d jotted down as he talked to tenants. “I’ve got thirty-four names. And there were twelve apartments where I got no answer.”

“It’s late and I never was good at the fox, geese and grain game. Figured out anything from all this?”

Brody leaned back in his chair, balancing it on the two back legs. He gestured with his empty water bottle. “Amanda Winger used her entry card three times on the night of Briggs’s murder, once on Zelke’s night and twice last night. And get this. Ms. Winger is seventy-eight.”

“What’s she doing in a ritzy swinging-singles’ condo?”

“Actually, she’s a special case. She’s Tammy Sutton’s mother, and of course Kenneth Sutton is head of the board.”

“So Tammy Sutton probably has a card that reads Amanda Winger.”

“Kenneth Sutton could, too. There’s no telling.”

“What about Miles Landis? His name is on there.”

“Yep. His card was used twice each night. Between six-thirty and seven-thirty, then again later. Close to midnight.”

Brody stood and checked off their names.

“There’s no difference in the cards? Date issued? One says duplicate?”

Brody shook his head tiredly. “There’s nothing on the card except the tenant’s name and apartment number. And get this, the housekeeping and maintenance staff all use the same coded card. That one just says staff. The only place their cards don’t work is on the penthouse. And if that’s not enough, the staff also have master keys to the dead bolts, so they can get in to clean. Biggest mess I’ve ever seen. I’m recommending to the board that they find themselves a new manager.”

“Security cameras?”

“I’ve already been through all that. There’s no guard in the guardhouse to check ID and no camera on the gate.

“The only security camera in the whole place is the one in front of the elevators in Victoria Kirkland’s suite. Egan has the disk, but Deason’s right. We’re not going to see anything. Whoever attacked her didn’t come through the front entrance.”

“So what about Victoria Kirkland? Egan said she wasn’t injured. Did she see anything?”

Brody shook his head. “The perp attacked her from behind. She has bruises on her neck that are consistent with Zelke’s and Briggs’s injuries. I took fingerprints, but of course prints on skin are always a long shot.”

“She’s on all three lists.”

Brody nodded. “She’s obviously super-organized and efficient. She gets in within two minutes either side of six o’clock every day.”

“Sounds more like super-anal. Any way she could have faked her injuries?”

Brody glowered at him.

“Hey—what? Did I step on toes?”

Brody ignored him. “Byron Dalloway has three entries last night, but none on the night of Zelke’s murders and only one for the night of Briggs’s murder.”

Hayes stood and stretched. “So you’re targeting the odd patterns, like the old lady going out three times in one night, and like Majorsky there. She’s done a lot of coming and going.”

“I’m working on the theory that whoever is doing this is using a duplicate card they got from one of the tenants. And has somehow obtained a master key to the dead bolts. The individual apartment keys are different.”